Footsteps in the Furrow. Andrew Arbuckle
ploughing. The mark ensured the men were ploughing at the correct depth.
More evidence of grieves being men of independent mind comes from another farmer, who recalled that his first grieve was an excellent man. There was therefore disappointment when his employee came to hand in his notice. Asked why, the grieve – frustrated by the farmer’s constant interference in the working of the farm – replied that the farmer did not need a grieve, ‘only a talking orraman.’
Even in their leisure time, the farm grieves seldom mixed with the other men. One recollection was of the farm men all waiting for the bus to take them to Cupar while their grieve stood a little way off. The working hierarchy went from farmer to grieve, and onto the horsemen or tractormen. These latter categories were even stricter in who was first among equals.
The first horseman always had the best pair of horse on the farm and he carried out the most prestigious work. His team would plough the rigs close to the road, where the neighbours would look over the dykes to see what was happening. He would lead the team of binders cutting the grain and his cart would be the lead in any teamwork.
His team of horses would be first out of the stable in the morning and first back at night. It was a foolish number two horseman who tried to usurp that position, but equally, the second horseman would stamp on any indiscretion by the man responsible for the third pair of horse, and so on down the line.
This tradition was carried on until late in the last century and I recall tractors coming back home from various corners of the farm, all checking to see they were returning in the correct order. Anyone even slightly ahead of the rightful place was expected to dilly-dally a little to ensure the correct pecking order. Equally, it was not unknown that if someone broke rank coming out of the stable, then he would be sent back in to restore proper order.
And so to the orraman: for much of the century, such men were needed to carry out the many unskilled, but physically hard jobs on the farm. The Courier newspaper used to carry literally dozens of advertisements for those who neither wanted nor could drive horses, nor cope with tractors. They always called for ‘good workers’, but who would describe himself as anything other?
The orramen were those who helped graip at the potato pits, bagged off grain at the threshing mill and carried out other menial tasks on the working farm. Orramen were scarce. They were expected to do any work required of them. Often they were only in demand at busy times of the year.
Then there were the bothy loons and single men, who took the spare pair or the single horse for work such as basic harrowing in spring time, taking the milk cans to the station on a daily basis and carting in the feed for the indoor livestock.
Those working with livestock never went into the stable to get their orders. It was accepted that those working with cattle or sheep would negotiate their work with the farmer, not the farm grieve. Rather reluctantly, the shepherd or cattleman would help at harvest time or possibly even in the spring of the year, but they always did so in their own time after tending to the needs of their stock.
Work was often a family affair, with many of the wives also working year round on the farm. Apart from milking cows and feeding poultry, they were seldom given anything other than menial work. To them fell tasks such as gathering stones off the newly sown ground in the spring to avoid damage to machinery at harvest, gathering the sheaves into stooks for drying when the binders went into the crop and carrying away chaff from the threshing mill. At turnip or sugar beet thinning, the women would come towards the end of the line that was always led by the first horseman.
Women farm workers were traditionally poorly paid. At the end of World War I, they received just over half of men’s wages. This rose to three-quarters by 1938, but in many jobs such as singling beet they were doing the equivalent of a man.
And women were poorly regarded as workers, too. In 1893, Mr R. Hunter Pringle, reporting for the Royal Commission on Labour stated, ‘I am of the opinion that the women in Fife are very poor workers when compared with those in Berwick and Roxburgh. The bondagers in the Borders are young, strong lasses able to handle a fork or dung graip. In Fife they are slow with the hoe, easily tired and incapable of unusual exertion.’
Women were never at the end of the line during sugar beet or turnip thinning; the farm grieve would reserve that place. From this point he could observe the quality of workmanship and control the speed of the thinning team.
Apart from the regular female workers, whole families turned out at the busy seasons. It was accepted that farm workers’ children missed school to help at harvest. In the potato field, children of various ages would do this backbreaking work alongside their mother. Shepherds and cattlemen with wives and families were popular as it was generally expected that ‘the family’ would ensure seven-day-per-week attendance on the stock.
Feeing markets
Although this is a practice long since departed, throughout the first forty years of the century, farm workers moved on an almost annual basis. In Fife the moving term was generally Martinmas, 28 November, while north and south of the county, the preferred term time was Whitsun, or 28 May. There were complaints against the Martinmas term, especially when the weather was severe and people had to move in cold and wet conditions.
For those who had taken a new job, the move entailed putting their worldly possessions on a cart supplied by their new employer. If the ‘flitting’ day was wet or cold, every stick of furniture, every piece of clothing and everyone involved was soaked. Making the situation worse was the fact that the move often ended up in an unheated, damp house. To compound this, the outgoing ploughman had often left it in a mess, meaning the new tenant could not move in without cleaning up first.
A country minister at the time said he always dreaded a wet term as invariably there would be deaths in the days and weeks following the move. Often, those worst affected with pneumonia were the biggest and strongest of men.
If death occurred, it was usually the Co-operative Funeral Service that carried out the final duties. Most workers were members of the ‘coopie’, where they could get a dividend on their purchases, but as one ploughman remarked, ‘The Co-op always has the last say on what happens to you.’
The resistance to changing the moving date away from November to the better weather that might be expected in May was that moving during the Whitsun term meant that gardens would not be put in. This was an important consideration in those days when a goodly proportion of the family’s food came from the cottage garden. To get round the problem, in Roxburgh, in the Scottish Borders, men fee’d would have a day off to put their garden in at the new farm.
For those on the move the formula was straightforward. As term approached, the farmer would enquire of his staff, ‘Are ye biding?’ If the question was not asked, then it could be taken the farmer did not want his employee to stay.
It was almost taken as a rule that men moved every term. This constant movement was described as a ‘restless spirit within the workforce’ by the 1893 report into labour in the agricultural sector. The report added that, ‘in many cases it is alleged the wife is to blame.’
All the moving from tied cottage to tied cottage did nothing to improve the quality of the accommodation. In 1901, a building expert quoted in the Royal Highland Agricultural Society Journal stated that, ‘Farm labourers shift a great deal and the cottage is their house for the time being. It therefore follows they have little interest in taking care of the structure.’
On the feeing day itself at the Fluthers, the traditional fairground area in Cupar, there was a wide assortment of itinerant showmen and numerous stalls. In this throng were the farmers and farm servants, the latter often holding their hands out, palms upward, in a depiction of someone willing and able to work.
One farmer interviewed said that his yardstick was, ‘a good small man was always better than a big man.’ His reasoning was that many bigger men suffered bad backs as a consequence of the heavy work involved in farming in those early days of the century.
If a bargain could be struck over wages and conditions, then the